Here is a screenshot I took while watching a YouTube posted by Vidstorical Films called “H.J. Whitley – The Father of Hollywood.” It caught my eye because the shot wasn’t just standard footage of the Hollywood Hotel, but it was taken while the venerable (but run-down) hotel was under demolition. That places it in the summer of 1956 when it fell to the wrecking ball to make way for the $10 million, twelve-story First Federal Savings & Loan Association of Hollywood building.
If you want to see the video, you can watch it here
The Savings & Loan building was in turn replaced by the Hollywood and Highland shopping mall. This is how that same corner looked in May 2022.
This hurts to see
Don’t like seeing that torn down, either! Three years ago I happened to see a photograph for sale on eBay that was looking toward the southeast corner of Hollywood Blvd. and it looked like it had a large dark square around it, but on closer inspection it looked as though it was taken through a window, and I realized it was taken through one of those windows you see in what’s left of the hotel in the above photo. It was either the center window or the one to the right of it. And there is no glass in the window, nor any curtains around it from the inside. It looked out into the intersection where you can see the Coffee Dan’s across the street and the movie playing at the Hollywood Theatre that was released in August of 1956 when the Hollywood Hotel was being torn down. I surmise someone with a camera somehow went up there inside and took the photo!
I then discovered a photo from the same seller which showed the intersection from the street corner and the car waiting for the light to turn left, in the above mentioned photo from the Hotel, is out in the middle of the intersection in that photo. So they were taken in the same time frame!
The photo being sold on eBay and taken from the window of the Hollywood Hotel being demolished was so unusual and interesting to me, I figured I wouldn’t see it again, so I bought it, and the other corresponding photo as well!
I have to add, I never liked that Savings & Loan building, either. You can see renderings of it that look like a rather nicely designed building, but I never thought that at any time I was around it. It also did not fit in any way with any of the other architecture around there. I was not unhappy to see that torn down. At least the current monstrosity there advertises movies.
Oh, ugh! I agree. This is painful!
Martin, any chance you could post the photos you mention. They sound fascinating.
As if this wasn’t enough, Metro Archives has a photo in their facilities file that shows the guys tearing down the old Los Angeles Pacific/PERy Sherman shops facility to the west in the early ‘60’s. They just couldn’t wait to take down anything of historical interest back then.